Go ahead, touch my junk

In the past couple of weeks, as a result of new rules and new equipment just coming on line, the Transportation Security Administration has surpassed the Internal Revenue Service as America’s least popular government agency and a very symbol of … nearly everything: intrusive bureaucracy, incompetent government employees, the erosion of privacy, political correctness, sexual perversion, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, you name it. TSA employees are mocked as freaks and weirdos, or denounced as goons and thugs, or both. People are being encouraged to opt for a hand inspection rather than going through the metal detector or the new body scanners — either for reasons of alleged safety or just as a protest.

Ordinarily, I am an easy mark for arguments that safety measures of almost all sorts are excessive. I believe that people in general, and Americans in particular, are very bad at rationally assessing small risks of large bad outcomes, such as a terrorist attack on your plane. But in this case, TSA’s critics are having too good a time. And I have a special reason for gratitude to the agency.

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For the past five years, as the result of an operation for Parkinson’s disease, I walk around with wires in my brain connected to two pacemakers in my chest. I’m not supposed to go through metal detectors, and nobody’s told me that these new machines are OK, so I avoid those as well. Instead, I have to ask for a “pat-down.” It usually causes a small fuss (smaller and smaller as more people get mechanical parts), which is slightly embarrassing. Especially when the airport is crowded and the security lines are long — and when are they not? — I worry that the people behind me are thinking, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, why doesn’t he just stay home?” (I know that cruel thought sometimes briefly crosses my mind when I’m behind someone in a wheelchair or other complication.) And I imagine the TSA people rolling their eyes and thinking, “Just what we need this morning: another one.”

But in my experience, the TSA people are unfailingly polite. I don’t mean almost always: I mean 100 percent of the time. Compare this with, say, the Postal Service. In five years, I’ve never had anything but a pleasant experience. (Well, you can’t honestly call the whole experience pleasant, but the TSA people have always — always, without exception — been pleasant and usually a bit apologetic.) And think of what they have to do and put up with all day: people’s smelly feet when they take off their shoes, repeating and repeating the same information about putting your cell phone in your carry-on and taking your laptop out, and then watching people get this simple instruction wrong, again and again.